The FDR car is coming back to Victoria for re-enactment
Couple to play four-term U.S. president and first lady as they relive 1937 visit
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the four-term U.S. president and giant 20th-century political figure, had one quality that enchants history buff Scott Larsen: He was a gentleman.
“FDR came from a station in life and a background that just didn’t do battles with other people like we see on TV today,” Larsen said. “He could get along with practically anyone and I think that is sorely lacking now.”
Larsen, a 58-year-old healthcare worker from New Westminster, is coming to Victoria today to re-enact a Sept. 30, 1937, visit by FDR, his wife, Eleanor, and son James. Victoria was a little excursion during a two-week tour of the U.S. Pacific Northwest by the family.
In a re-enactment paid for and arranged by Larsen himself, he will adopt FDR’s signature look: fedora hat and cigarette in an elegant holder clamped in his teeth. A friend will play Eleanor.
The make-believe first couple will be driven to the B.C. legislature (tentatively scheduled for 11 to 11:30 a.m.) and then to Government House in the same car that carried the Roosevelts, a 1936 McLaughlin Buick Roadmaster Phaeton.
That car, one of only three of its type built in Canada, was originally owned by Victoria’s wealthy Dunsmuir family. It is now owned by Victoria’s Allan Botting, a retired engineer and aircraft artist.
Botting said he and his family call the car “Elinor” after the Dunsmuir daughter who originally used it. The car was sold during the war. It was sold again in 1955 to Botting’s father, who passed it on.
Larsen’s fascination with Roosevelt began at age 13 during school in Pasco, Washington, where he grew up. A teacher spoke ill of Roosevelt and his four terms as president. Americans amended their constitution to limit a president to two terms in 1947. “It was the four terms,” he said. “I just thought: ‘Wow, who is this guy.’ ”
With so much written on Roosevelt and his presidency during the Great Depression, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Second World War, Larsen said he concentrated on the FDR legacy in the Pacific Northwest.
Larsen learned the three-hour stop in Victoria makes Roosevelt the only sitting U.S. president to ever visit Vancouver Island.
It was a visit made at the request of B.C. government officials. Larsen suspects Roosevelt’s willingness to stop in Victoria was prompted by U.S. interest in constructing the Alaska Highway through B.C. The highway was completed in 1942.
In 1937, before the outbreak of war, Imperial Japan was flexing its muscles. It was feared that Alaska and parts of Western Canada, might be targeted. A connecting road was seen as crucial.
Later today, Larsen will leave Victoria aboard the M.V. Coho for a few more re-enactment visits and talks in Washington about Roosevelt’s legacy.
He said he has learned the whole 1937, two-week tour by the Roosevelts involved the use of eight railways, two destroyers, dozens of cars and many security officials. Eleanor rode one of the destroyers to Seattle after the Victoria visit to connect with a flight back home.
But FDR carried on and Larsen said he likes to think he enjoyed the trip. One thing of note is that FDR suffered a bad sinus condition made miserable by the hot, muggy summers and falls of Washington, D.C.
“So I’m only guessing here but I like to think one of the best nights he ever slept must have been in 1937 at Lake Crescent” Lodge in Olympic National Park, Larsen said. “It rained all night, it would have been cool and his sinuses would not have given him any trouble.”